Clarity
by BurningMandala
Summary: Maybe that was part of the problem, they had become too much a part of each other and she had a life to live. Then there was that other thing.. love.


Author's note: I can't stay very committed to multi-chapter stories but I promise I will eventually get things uploaded eventually. Reviews and constructive criticism definitely helps me to know how you like it. It's good motivation. xx

Disclaimer: No, I don't own anything. Just borrowing.

* * *

Clara unlocked the door to her flat and threw her keys in a bowl she kept on a table she kept on a small table by her front her door. It had been a long day, and she was tired. She toed off her shoes, leaving them in the middle of the floor and collapsed on her couch, leaving her bags carelessly slung on the ground. She had papers she needed to grade and lessons to plan but, really, it could wait.

Today marked two years since she had last seen him, the Doctor, and it was never an easy day. None of the days were easy, actually. Clara had a life now, though, and she loved it but she missed the Doctor. Goodbye's were always difficult. She thought when she told the Doctor they should separate, that it would be a relatively simple thing because it was a choice she made on her own. When her mum died, she had no choice but to say goodbye. Her mother was ripped away from her, too soon, and it wasn't fair and it hurt.

So, when the Doctor had delivered Clara safe and sound back to the Maitland's after she had been with him a few days, after the incident at Trenzalore, she told him she thought it was best they not go on adventures anymore. He was disheartened but then asked if he could still visit her on Wednesday's. They didn't have to go anywhere, he swore. He would just miss her too much if he didn't see her at all. She was his Clara, his impossible girl. When she told him no, the Doctor looked so forlorn. So lost and confused, she hadn't seen that look on him before and it was now imprinted on her mind. How she hurt him. Clara convinced herself that this was the right thing to do, he would be fine. The Doctor always moved on, ran to things, to new people, and he would find a new companion and travel with that person.

She had almost died, saving him and because he couldn't accept that she might die, he also almost died saving her while she was saving him. It made no sense in her mind why he wouldn't have let her just make that sacrifice for him. It's not like she had wanted to die, no, not at all. But she was one life. The Doctor could save millions and his existence was one that was so necessary, she would jump into his time line, time and time again if it meant he would be alive to planets and universes and things she still couldn't imagine even though she had seen so much on her journey's with him. Maybe that was part of the problem, they had become too much a part of each other and she had a life to live.

Then there was that other thing, love.

Clara had loved the doctor so much and had talked herself out of that feeling so many times when they were traveling that eventually it was so easy to pretend that the most she cared about him was as a friend. He was a difficult, difficult man. Completely mad but compassionate and caring. He had needed her. What she never knew, and never needed to know, was how he really felt about her. She didn't know if he had been in love with her. He didn't like sharing secrets and feelings and sometimes Clara was sure he would rather die then say how he felt. It was how he protected himself, she knew that. She would be lying if she did say that she hadn't wondered every once in awhile, though, if the way he cared for her was out of pure love.

She had gone to university, before she ever met the Doctor. Had graduated with a degree in education and soon after she graduated is when she went to visit the Maitland's. Then she ended up staying and caring for those kids, sometimes as if they were her own. Mrs. Maitland had been there for Clara when her own mother had passed away. Mr and Mrs Maitland had always been in her life. Her parents had been best friends with them. Clara was about nine when Angie, the eldest Maitland child, was born. She babysat Angie and Artie when was still in high school and never thought years later, when she was 24 that she would have lived with them for a year and been their main source of care. Their father had gotten a new job and had thrown himself into it. Of course, he loved his children but he also needed to provide a source of income for them to live comfortably. He offered to pay Clara for looking after Angie and Artie but she didn't see it as a job and besides they had given her home. Sometimes it got lonely when she would visit her father. They could talk for hours but eventually silence would settle in and the absence of his wife, her mother, would be very clear. The years didn't ever fill in that silence.

Then the Doctor literally just time traveled right into her life from the year 1207 and her life changed forever.

The night of Trenzalore, he had told her all she wanted to know. About the Dalek Asylum, the Ponds, Victorian London and how one of her echoes had brought him back down to reality, so to speak. Clara couldn't sleep that night and he didn't want to leave her alone. So, he held her that night while she asked him questions about everything. Entering his timestream didn't answer all the questions she ever had like one would think it would. Only the Doctor could do that. He told her how Oswin and Clara Oswin ultimately put him on the track to finding her because they had both saved him and changed his life in someway and he couldn't let them go. He needed to find the connection between the two of them and why he had crossed paths with them. How getting that phone call from a girl who couldn't find the internet was one of the best moments in his 1000+ years because it had been her. The Doctor told Clara that running with her made him believe in hope again. That she was perfect in every way for him. Bossy, short, and perfect.

The Doctor didn't know many of the details of her personal life. He didn't ask much and she didn't tell. After Trenzalore, that bothered her a bit because did he think she could travel with him forever? He wanted to keep her safe, yes she knew, but he didn't know she had gone to university. He didn't know that while one of her passions was taking care of people, teaching was also a passion she had.

When he left he told Clara he would respect her wish and stay away but that if she ever needed him or wanted to see him that we would be there as fast as the TARDIS would allow.

_I will always spare you a thought, every minute of every day_, he had told her

Soon after returning home to the Maitland's, Clara felt it time to really start things for herself. She found herself a flat that she feels really suits her and promised the Mr Maitland that she would have dinner with the family every Sunday. Clara was offered a teaching job that she couldn't pass up. A steady job, with a steady income. Her very own flat. Stability. She still wanted to travel, see different countries and go sightseeing. But properly. With a passport, on an airplane with luggage and all the hassle of finding a place to stay while on holiday. The best part about being a teacher was that she, too, got the Summer off.

Clara sighed, sitting up from her place on the sofa and ran a hand through her hair. She took in her surroundings. She really loved her flat. She made it her home. After almost two years of living in this place, she was glad it finally felt where she belonged. Her father had helped her paint the walls and move in all the furniture she had purchased for herself. Her fridge was covered in artwork and letters from her students. Above the fireplace, in a frame, was the leaf she had once kept in her _101 Places to See_ book her mum had given her. Her beginning, the most important leaf in human history her father called it. The Doctor had returned that leaf to her when he saved her. Now that leaf served a memory of not only herself and parents but it reminded her of the Doctor, too.

Her flat is mostly of clear of things that would remind her of him. Sometimes thinking of him makes her feel guilty, because she didn't give him much of a choice but to leave. Inside a drawer in a table bedside her sofa, though, there are a few pictures of herself and the Doctor. The pictures Angie and Artie had found when they discovered she was time traveling, and a few others. You really shouldn't take pictures with a time lord but Clara didn't care. Every so often when he had been lost in thought or reading a book she would sneak up behind him and snap a picture of the two of them together. They had mostly turned out horrible because he would move when he realized she was trying to take a picture or he would just have a look of complete bewilderment and surprise. She didn't look at the pictures routinely but when she did, they always served to make her smile.

She missed that man. Two years should be nothing for the Doctor but it was most definitely something for her. She took the pictures from their place in the drawer and looked at each one of them. She came across her favorite one and smiled but felt tears in her eyes. She ran her finger across his face, in the photograph. She really missed that face. He was handsome in a way, a goofy way. And good god, that chin of his was ridiculous but missed that, too.

"I wish, more than anything, you were here right now," she whispered to the man in the picture, knowing she couldn't be heard but still needing to say the words aloud. Needing to admit the fact to herself.

* * *

The Doctor sat in the console room of the TARDIS, looking through calendars. He was on a third calendar now. It had been 730 days since that first day without Clara Oswald by his side. He had actually been keeping track of the days, in human time. Like a human. He felt it to be silly but he couldn't find any other way to make it matter. Knowing the number of the days somehow felt more meaningful, it felt like a count to something more. It gave him hope that maybe one day soon she would call for him to be there and oh, would he be there for her. In his hearts, he knew no one else had mattered so much to him before and it scared him a little. Clara made him feel so entirely human that sometimes he felt ashamed of it.

He would check in on her sometimes. She didn't know that, he hoped. He would park the TARDIS far enough away and just watch her for a moment. Just enough to make sure she was happy, breathing, and alive. Once, he went to the Maitland's, to inquire about her. He swore Angie to secrecy, that she must not tell Clara he was there. She promised and told him that Clara was well. She told him about Clara moving out and being a teacher. That she knows Clara misses him even though she never talks about him and about how no, she doesn't have a boyfriend and she hasn't been dating anyone. The Doctor didn't ask for that information, specifically, but he was pleased to know there wasn't anyone Clara was romantically involved with.

_I wish, more than anything, you were here right now_

"Eh? What was that?" The Doctor asked the TARDIS, already knowing the answer because he would know that voice from anywhere, but she showed him a picture of Clara on the screen, anyway.

"Right now? About me?" The TARDIS made a noise in answer to his question.

"Well, you know what to do then!" he said to her.

* * *

Clara had turned her kitchen table into a makeshift desk so she could grade her student's papers and she was going over them all now as she heard a knock at her door.

"Be right there!" she shouted from her kitchen.

She really wasn't expecting company and wasn't dressed for it, either. Her hair was messy and curled and probably also in tangles down her back and she was wearing a baggy university sweatshirt and plaid pajama pants. The knocking didn't cease though she had said she would be there in one moment. There was no doubt they had heard her, but the knocking persisted. She groaned and sort of threw the door open to make sure the visitor was aware of her impatience. She hadn't bothered looking through the small hole in her door before she opened it up and was shocked to see who she saw.

"Hello!" he greeted happily, thrilled to see her. She, on the other hand, was stunned to silence and sort of just narrowed her eyes at him as if he wasn't really there. He stepped forward, in her flat and wrapped his arms around her. A little too tightly and for a little too long, but she didn't move.

"Do you know," he started, as he pulled away from her and looked down at her, "that it has been 730 days since we last saw each other. Seven-hundred-and-thirty!"

"Oh?" Clara asked, her voice very still and quiet.

He pulled small pocket calendars from his jacket and flipped threw the pages of each one, counting the X's marked on each day of each month from the two years, very quickly.

"Yup," he answered coolly.

Clara moved from him to shut the door and made her way back into the kitchen sitting down in the chair she had been occupying before the Doctor had made this unexpected entrance of his. She took a few deep breaths before turning to look at him. He looked concerned now, instead of carefree and happy. He had been so excited to see her, he hadn't really paid much attention to how she was. Her demeanor, the shock on her face.

"Doctor, why are you here?"

"Oh, yes. Well, I heard you."

She tilted her head waiting for him to elaborate, but he didn't, "You.. heard me?"

He nodded, "You said that you wished, more than anything, that I was here right now. The TARDIS brought me here. I think she misses you, too, you know?"

Clara laughed a little at that, "Right."

She brought her hands up to rub at her eyes, she knew there were tears forming. Or that possibly she had been crying since he showed up at her flat. She didn't really know. He told her that he would be here whenever she needed him and right now, she very much did need him. Because she's missed him and yearned to be in his company from the moment he left 730 days ago. She's needed him since then but she's not admitted it until now. Of course the TARDIS heard her. What Clara can't admit is if she ever would have called for him to be here, especially if the TARDIS hadn't heard her. She couldn't be sure if she would have just kept on going because now, now she'll have to say goodbye to the Doctor once again. It's an inevitably that the Doctor will leave when he enters your life. Last time, she just sent him away before he could leave first.

"Clara?" The Doctor questioned, pulling the woman out of her thoughts, "What's wrong?" His voice was straining. Like, he was regretting being here. Or like he felt like he had made a mistake coming to see her.

"I don't want to have to say goodbye to you again," she answered, straightforwardly.

"Oh, Clara. Clara, I never wanted to say goodbye in the first place."

It pained her to hear that, because she was aware of that. She knew he wasn't trying to hurt her, though. She knew he would never hurt her, but she had hurt him because she had sent him away.

"I'm sorry," Clara whispered.

"No, no, no. Clara, that's not what I meant. I just. I meant, if you asked, I would stay. You asked me to go, so I did. You have a life here, Clara, I was never upset with you. I've only missed you."

She stood up and hugged him tightly, his arms finding their way around her small frame and hugging her back, pressing a kiss into hair.

"I've missed you, too, Doctor. We can talk about everything else, later."

He smiled down at her, "There will be a later?"

"If you'll stay for a bit, yes."

If possible, his smile grew wider and he chuckled, "For a bit, I suppose."


End file.
